Posted
by
timothy
on Friday May 27, 2011 @01:58AM
from the just-the-good-parts-is-bad-policy dept.

rysiek writes "In a surprise announcement, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared new policy toward a more open state: ''All information funded from public sources should be available as public property, free for everyone to use it as they wish,' said Tusk last week, during a meeting with NGO leaders in Poland. (English translation.)
This is very unusual in Europe, and in fact puts Poland ahead of other EU states. A loose web of Polish NGOs for more than two years has advocated more open public information laws. A bill to that effect
will now be presented in Sejm (the Polish parliament)."

Moreover, the translation suggests his statement was made with significant caveats. TFA's third paragraph suggests that info funded by public sources is public...unless it's not in the best interests of the state, or is defined as classified – the example given is of treasury and economic research. The guy is talking about creating a category of free information, not making everything publically available as the summary claims. Seems it’s about moving Poland towards the position already occupied by the rest of the EU, not barrelling past it.

If I’m reading the translation wrong, and to be fair it’s a little hard on the eyes as it stands, I’d appreciate Polish speakers pointing it out.

Don't rely on Google Translate for precision:)
The Polish text says, that once the provisions are in place, everything will be public and free *by default*, aside from a limited amount of categories, like classified files or financial analysis, which the government relies on in negotiations with other parties.

Color me interested. Where in our constitution do I find the tools to amend it as I please?
Granted, there is a number of anachronisms from the bad old times that restrict free speech for no good reason (and I believe the American constitution has it right when it comes to good reasons to restrict the free speech), but any changes to the constitution require quite a wide consensus behind them.
The open government legislation is of course a step in a right direction as it establishes an important general pr

It's not about changing the text of the constitution, it's about introducing laws that conflict with it. The designated role of the president as protector of the constitution, is all but nonexistent - if given bill serves the political agenda of the current president, it will pass. The bill passes into the law and it takes years to overturn it.

No, the polish constitution is not easy to change. But it's "just a piece of paper" that is easily ignored.

Could you provide examples? I'm not saying it's impossible to enact a law that's unconstitutional - if the parlamentary majority and the president are for it, the Constitutional Tribunal will have to overthrow it and it can take time - but you make it sound like it was the norm, not an exception. While 214 cases in 25 years [trybunal.gov.pl] may seem like a lot, bear in mind that most of them concerns rather mundane subjects.

The 24-hour courts definitely don't provide the arrested with all their due rights.The "equality of genders" regulations quite frequently put women at unfair advantage, giving them extra privledges.There is a law that was intended to prevent people from misappropriation of real estate - if given real estate was purchased shortly before its value increased significantly, it can be taken away from you for its original value. No proof of ill intent needed. Honest people lost whole newly built houses, receiving

"Obama is coming today to Poland, maybe it has something to do with it..."I am not sure the US government leads the world in its action on opening up its data for the public to see so I am not sure the Polish authorities will be doing this to impress the US - I don't the the US government will necessarily see this as an important step forward by Poland and won't aid trade discussions etc.

Probably this has more to do with impressing the local population, getting re-elected, etc.

well, not quite. there will be some provisions about what is *not* open and up for grabs, but those will be few and will be clearly defined in the bill. everything else will be completely open.

yes, thanks to election looming around the corner it was possible to actually pressure the government and the PM for this, but it looks like it will become the law before the elections. so win anyways.

Disclaimer: I was participating in the meetings, representing the Polish FLOSS Foundation.

Could you please explain the part about blocking the Internet content please?I am afraid that this was the main concern of the P.M. Tusk's government considering their persistent attempts at silencing and criminalizing the opposition.Is there a chance that Internet filtering may become enforceable before the autumn elections?

I do not think internet filtering will become law in Poland anytime soon. There is a meeting of NGOs and Ministry of Justice on that topic planned during the next week, and we believe we can convince lawmakers that internet filtering is a bad idea.

I would like to remind you all that a year ago there was an idea for network filtering (in the context of anti-gambling crackdown), and the very same loosely-weaved group of NGOs and bloggers, on a similar meeting with the Prime Minister convinced the Government not to make it a law. So we have a good track record here. Hopes are up.

Thank you for your explanation. Yes, I remember that last year's ad-hoc group meeting with P.M. Tusk. Although many people had objections as to the way that group's members were selected, the outcome has been positive.Would it strain your kindness to ask where I can find any records from that last meeting, the information about how and when was it announced, who could participate etc.

well, not quite. there will be some provisions about what is *not* open and up for grabs, but those will be few and will be clearly defined in the bill. everything else will be completely open

Based on previous examples we can be quite sure that what's classified will be a matter of an arbitrary decision of some low-level clerk trying to cover up their incompetence/ hide something from the general public because if they don't know it exists they're not going to ask some inconvenient questions

As requested: it is not exactly as you understood, although also no the way, summary tells. He says that there MAY be cases, which can be categorised as non freely available, but IF those get identified, there will be a clear and highly precise catalogue of those cases...
Well, it doesn't change things much (backdoor is there) but the wording is more palatable (as expected from an experienced liar^H^H^H^Hpolitician)

And this attempt will fail, too, as people are watching. And no, no such bargain has been done. Network filtering is not something we in the NGOs are willing to agree on. And as last year has shown, we are able to get enough clout to do something about it.

Considering that Polish Government has been using FOSS in the majority of the governmental boxes, it is nice to see that their Government looks upon proven qualities of "openness", as well. Playing open minded, with cards shown. Nice.

Where did that information come from? I live in Poland and I'm pretty sure FOSS isn't almost used at all on governmental boxes. I used to work for a governmental agency and never saw anything but Windows.

A bit better on transparency [transparency.org], but still below most proper European countries.

So pretty true, I'd say.

Well, if I count correctly it's #19 out of #45 in Europe.
Below most proper European countries? Probably right, for some values of "proper". Sure, that's not impressive, but it's not "very low on European scale", right?
I actually am Polish and I can tell you (subjectively) that compared to what happens nearby (Ukraine, Belarus) we're better off. Even the Czechs, which are a more sensible country scored worse on that list.

Most of East European states are actually more economically liberal than West Europe. Some (e.g. Baltic ones) are almost libertarian. That's what you get when you suddenly remove 40 years of planned economy and totalitarianism - the pendulum swings the other way.

We need a real leftist party.Not SLD which is "liberals painting themselves red".Not PiS which while leftist in economy, is ultra-right in other issues.A real party that will fight for the rights of the working man.

It'sless about money and more about employee's rights. The pretty talk about free market of jobs is conveniently omitting bosses who are liars and thieves.Free market is all about the "customer" (employee) staying well informed about the qualities of "goods" (job conditions) at various providers. Not so in the job market.

There were sites where the employees could describe the real situation at their workplaces. They were all shut down by litigation by employers whose business was hurt by truth about false p

What you are talking about in this post has nothing to with needing a "real leftist party". It has to do with better contract law enforcement and the presence of a vibrant job market. If their are significantly more people available to do a particular job category than there are jobs, it doesn't matter what the laws are, these types of abuses will happen. On the other hand, if you are in a job category where there are more jobs than there are people capable of doing the job, you will not have a problem with

Vibrant job market is a pipe dream for which there is no recipe. Many tried and failed.

The contract law is okay as it is, it's that the law system that is hard to access for "joe average", and no institutions that watch over upholding the law by default - it's always the person who is being screwed over that has to fight the legal battle, and receives no help or favors - the same fees apply to a milionaire factory owner and to a broke employee who got screwed over, except it's a negligible drop for the empl

This policy is quite old, so if anything our Prime Minister just restated existing policy. However, there is a catch -- beurocrats can put as many obstacles as they want, i.e. you want a public information? Here we go with xerox, with bad printing, just 700 pages, find what you want.

A lot of goverment also violates that policy and... nothing happens.

In short, forget about policies and law in Poland, only personal influences matter here. We don't even have freedom of speech.

important part of NGOs talks with the Government in Poland right now is advocating open standards, and transparency. seems we might have gained some ground here, too. there will be an additional Open Data submission soon.

For example, the Greek government decided to publish its records in opengov.gr.

In that site, there is a lot of information published, including phone bills from public services. But there is no reference to what phone numbers public servants call, making the freedom essentially useless: we, the citizens, don't know if the public servants spent money phoning other public servants or sex hot lines, for example.

In March this year polish government tried to ram through draconian law that would require registering web sites in local authorities, allowed some beurocrats from KRRiTV (polish FCC equivalent) to decide which content is appropriate, which is not and charge fines / mandate takedowns of content considered "inappropriate" by those beurocrats. Whole affair of passing this crap was "to harmonize with EU laws" of course.

This caused a huge upheaval, especially in ranks of rulling party electorate that considers

OK, I live in Poland.
First I will write why it doesn't matter what is written in this article.
Next I will write why this article is a bullshit.
[1]
a)
One year ago Prime Mnister Tusk tried to create a law that allows a censorship of the internet. People start shouting "WTF", "GTFO", etc, so he withdrew. About one year later he tried do the same thing but in more subtle way.
b)
Probably as you know about one year ago Polish President Kaczynski has died in the plane crash. Three things about this and Mr.

This is why I mentioned imperfect spelling and sexual joke by Jon Lajoie:)

Generally speaking, much more over this news from Poland...
Yes, we are fucked up. When USSR collapsed USA said "You see!!! No strong economy without democracy!!!" But now China shows that's not true. Western world assumed 20 years ago that China would take democracy with economic cooperation. But now we can see something quite opposite...

The issues discussed today included also Internet blocking schemes, mandatory data retention, regulation of the convergent on-demand services as well as liability of Internet service providers and notice and takedown procedures. The Internet community representatives have welcomed progress on some of the issues as well as indicating items still to be resolved during working meetings starting early next week.